THE DAY OF ARCHAEOLOGY

Today is the first ‘Day of Archaeology’ (www.dayofarchaeology.com), an online archaeology and social media experiment that coincides with the Council for British Archaeology’s Festival of Archaeology. The idea for this project came from a conversation between two PhD students, Matthew Law (Cardiff University) and Lorna Richardson (University College London), and emulates a successful project called ‘A Day in the life of the Digital Humanities’ which documented the daily work of people working in a field now known as ‘Digital Humanities’. Over 400 archaeologists from around the world have signed up to document their working day via the use of social media. They will be submitting blog posts, photographs, video footage or a combination of these to demonstrate to anyone interested how varied the archaeological profession is. All these submissions will be moderated and released through the project’s website and disseminated through different social media networks – for example on Flickr, Facebook,and Twitter (the hashtag for the project is #dayofarch).

Some project members will also be making use of the latest entrant to the social media fray – Google+ and will be using a ‘hangout’, to promote archaeology digitally. A hangout will be held in Google+ from 10am BST.

The project now has expressions of interest from people working on excavations everywhere from Belize to Zimbabwe, scientists working in laboratories, archaeologists talking about how cuts have affected their work, community archaeologists leading workshops and museum educators teaching the next generation about the magic of archaeology.

Various organisations have stepped in to produce and promote this project: The British Museum’s Department of Portable Antiquities and Treasure have provided server space and technical consultancy combined with the Council for British Archaeology, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities , British Archaeological Jobs and Resources(BAJR), Past Horizons magazine, and vital support from several commercial archaeological units – Wessex Archaeology and L:P Archaeology.

A number of Irish Archaeologists have signed up for the day including Moore Group. You can se our post at this link here…